Due to the number of celebrities who will be taking them off, putting them on their heads or up for auction, Comic Relief 2001 will go down in the fundraising hall of fame as the "pants" year. "Pants to poverty", this year's slogan, will be up there with such corkers as Hale and Pace's "stonk" song (1991) and "the invasion of the comic tomatoes" (1993).
From a marketing perspective, however, 2001 will also be remembered as the year charity went high tech. For Comic Relief's new media strategy this year is anything but "pants". Cisco, Oracle, Energis, BT and Compaq make up the panoply of technology giants who have built the website - or online fundraising mall - at www.comicrelief.com.
With a new three-minute donation engine, a state-of-the-art database, e-commerce solutions, security firewalls, online tariff voting and 82 call centres (staffed by 15,000 volunteers), Comic Relief hopes to take fundraising to heights hitherto unknown. If 1999's bargain basement website collected £400,000, it will be interesting to see if it can exceed this figure with equipment worth at least £1m.
From PR to sheer pocket-emptying effectiveness, Red Nose Day has always been the king of charity showcases. It gets an enormous amount of airtime, celebrity support (200 stars already this year) and press coverage. In 1988, the experience of a red-carbuncled Lenny Henry encouraging us to "hit those phonelines" as we sat back and watched the grand total shooting up miraculously was an early taste of interactive TV.
From village cake stalls and sponsored streaks to 1999's successful campaign to "turn the web red" banner ad campaign, which is bigger this time, the organisers have had 13 years' experience in cross-platform interaction.This year, according to marketing director Amanda Horton-Mastin, new media technology is at the forefront of fundraising strategy. Only a month ago, you wouldnÍt have suspected it: a basic "coming soon" site with Henry inviting you to check out "one of the most crucial websites around" was all that was on show. Then on February 19, a handful of journalists were invited to the launch of a "new interactive donation experience", a live web event featuring Lenny Henry and Joanna Lumley, "taking you through the steps leading to the galaxy of stars" which boasts that it features the names of every person to make an online donation.
The idea is immediate gratification for anyone donating any amount of money (although sadly, due to a "software error", my name won't be joining the likes of Michael Barrymore). The network infrastructure and transaction system, designed by Cisco with NatWest Streamline Merchant Services, can manage up to 200 consecutive donations a second and, amazingly, was built in just three weeks - compared to a traditional turnaround of two months.
Kevin Cahill, Comic ReliefÍs CEO, believes its new system will change the whole process of "giving online". "The most exciting thing," he says, "is that it gives Comic Relief the potential to reach the hearts and minds of people not just in the UK but throughout the world. It's a tangible way of helping Comic Relief tackle poverty and promote social justice in the UK and Africa, not just for Red Nose Day but on an ongoing basis."
The internet has already opened up new avenues of fundraising in the charity sector. There are now dozens of ethical shopping sites which support good causes by guaranteeing a percentage of every transaction. Sites such as shop2give.com, free2give.co.uk and webcharity.com, which allows people to buy, sell or donate using the e-auction format and even boasts a virtual thrift shop - Oxfam in cyberspace.
Most sites, however, lack the expensive credit card payment systems which would make donating secure and seamless. The e-commerce solution also means that for the first time Comic Relief can sell noses, gimmicks, T-shirts and, significantly, two new Harry Potter adventures donated by JK Rowling, due for publication on March 12.
"For the first time, this means we had to think about designing the site for a global audience," says Horton-Mastin, "and being able to handle 13 different currencies."
But it's the good ideas in conjunction with the pride-and-joy payment systems which the organisers hope will make the campaign a success. Ideas like Pantasy Football (thought up by the lads at Cisco systems), an online game spoof of Fantasy Football launched on Valentine's Day with the Daily Star which allows wannabe football managers to create their dream team built from their 11 worst footballers, based on the performance of players in FA Cup, Premier League and Worthington Cup games. Entries start at £2 with 80% of fees being donated by the production company Dream League.
During the two day event itself (March 16-17), while the focus will be on televised events, Robbie Williams's "Bid it sum" live auction will be a strong contender for eyeballs. Game-as-ever Robbie, the nation's favourite cheeky chappie, is giving up his kingsize bed, Technics decks and a handwritten version of his hit single Angels to go under the hammer. The actual auction will take place at Sotheby's on April 10, highlighted at sothebys.com/robbie, but bidding will take place on the official site and at robbiewilliams.com.
Pop stars Westlife and Craig David have also hitched their fan sites up to the mother ship and will be offering free tickets and other paraphernalia. Other web attractions accessed in the "Have a laugh" channel include web casts of celebrity interviews (the marketing department cannot say who because it will be on an "on the hop" basis), stand-up shorts and video streaming. You can already view the likes of Davina McCall, Angus Deayton and Geri Halliwell doing have-a-go improvisations with pants, and play the boxers versus Y-fronts game.
Then there's the much-hyped Celebrity Big Brother (a joint venture between BBC, Endemol and Comic Relief), running from March 9-16, which will attempt to mimick the success of the Channel 4 gameshow, with telephone voting (25p a minute) and regular web bulletins to keep us up to date on which stars are killing who. According to reports, participants are rumoured to include Frank Skinner, Mariella Frostrup and Chris Evans, while Mel B has had to drop out due to exhaustion. The online voting mechanism which will connect you to a tariff line before reconnecting to your ISP, is apparently "the first of its kind", but only works from direct dial-up modems.
And when the stage is packed up and the whole stonking circus over for another two years, Comic Relief will live on in its new virtual form. With a database containing the details of all who have "given it sum", the charity hopes to keep the web community alive 365 days a year with email updates and online attractions such as comedy casts, news and a permanent resource for schools. The site is currently advertising something called Web Nose Day, a website design competition for schools. ItÍs the online donation mechanisms, however, which the organisers hope will become the "killer app" for charities.
Last year, Comic Relief raised a record £35m, which will be distributed among a host of causes in the UK, Africa and globally. This time around, with a bit of luck, it could make more than all the profits of all the dotcoms in the UK in 2000 put together. Just imagine.
